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Children adopted abroad become citizens today
By Times staff and wire reports © St. Petersburg Times, published February 27, 2001 Cathy and Jeff Diercks know the frustration, longing and anguish that comes with adopting foreign children. Five years ago, the Tampa couple began the process with two babies from China, a seemingly endless barrage of forms, deadlines and paperwork. "You get just so burned out from doing paperwork," said Mrs. Diercks, 40. Today, thanks to the Child Citizenship Act, their 18-month-old daughter, Sydney Meijia, will wake up as an American citizen, without the filing of a single sheet of paper. "It's just such a relief," said Mrs. Diercks, whose husband is a financial planner. Sydney is among more than 75,000 children adopted from abroad and living in the United States who will automatically become U.S. citizens today because of changes Congress made in immigration law last year. Until today, parents of youngsters adopted overseas were required to undergo a costly and cumbersome naturalization process that sometimes took two years to complete, one more burden on top of the already complicated international adoption procedure. "Most people are totally unaware that a child adopted from overseas does not become a citizen automatically," said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., the main House sponsor of the bill. "Many of my colleagues were surprised to learn that this wasn't the case already." The Dierckses of Tampa got citizenship for their first daughter, Courtney QuiE, 31/2. The paperwork covered the dining room table. "It just drags on forever," Mrs. Diercks said. She and her husband and children plan to celebrate this weekend with other parents of Families with Children from China-Tampa Bay. Today, there also will be a ceremony at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall. Senators who helped pass the law, among them Don Nickles, R-Okla., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., plan to join dozens of adoptive families. Smaller events are planned elsewhere in the country. The Child Citizenship Act, approved by Congress last year in a rare example of bipartisanship on immigration legislation, grants automatic citizenship to most adopted children born abroad, provided they are under 18 and at least one parent or legal guardian is an American citizen. About 20,000 such adoptions occur every year -- about 15 percent of all adoptions in the United States -- and the average wait for citizenship processing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been two years. The new law removes a bureaucratic and psychological hurdle for parents who may well have waited years and paid up to $25,000 for international adoptions. To naturalize children adopted from abroad, the immigration service has required paperwork on parents and children, including birth and marriage certificates, photo identifications, alien registration cards and certified English translations of documents written in other languages. The agency also charges $125 per application. Brandi and Jeramy Ward of Hokes Bluff, Ala., know firsthand the frustration of dealing with the federal agency. The young couple have been waiting nearly two years for the agency's office in Atlanta to respond to the citizenship application for their 3-year-old son, Jeremiah, adopted from South Korea. "They seemed unconcerned," said Brandi Ward, a junior high school social studies teacher. "It wasn't something personal to them like it was to me." In a few cases, unnaturalized children face difficulties later in life, ranging from inconvenience to deportation. Many of those deported have been sent back to foreign lands to which they no longer have any ties. In one instance, John Gaul was adopted by a Florida family at the age of 4 but he was not naturalized immediately. Even though he was born in Thailand, Gaul spoke no Thai, had no Thai relatives and had never been back to Thailand -- until the U.S. government deported him in 1999, when he was 25, as an alien who served prison time for car theft and writing bad checks. "It's at long last a recognition that a child of American parents, whether born here or adopted overseas, is an American, and there's no distinction between the two," said Delahunt. "That recognition is long overdue." Delahunt knows from experience. He has an adopted daughter, Kara, now 26, who became a U.S. citizen several years ago after leaving Vietnam as a baby. As part of their celebration, Belinda and Don Siperko of Fort Worth, Texas, have been looking for sweatshirts emblazoned with "U.S.A." for their four children adopted from Russia: Andrei, 10; Bryan, 9; Nikolai, 4; and Zina, 3. "This new law means one more thing we don't have to worry about," Belinda Siperko said. "Now we can concentrate on our children." Sasha Matero, 11, of Cold Spring, N.Y., said in a letter he sent last month to Delahunt that ever since he was adopted from Russia two years ago, he has struggled to fit in with his American classmates. Most children his age, he said, take their citizenship for granted. "For most kids it doesn't mean anything because they have been American for their whole lives," Sasha wrote. "The hardest things are having a different passport and other papers than my brother and sisters," wrote Sasha, who has three older siblings who are the biological children of his parents. "I don't like being different and it makes my brother and sisters mad because I'm getting extra attention." Now all that is changing. "I will always be proud of my Russian heritage," Sasha wrote, "but I am here forever now and ready to be an American citizen." - Times staff writer Leanora Minai contributed to this report. Information from the New York Times and Associated Press also was used.
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